Behind him, Mr. Spenser sounded amused. "I chased you into the world, Your Grace. But I can assure you, I
have no wish for your estate, even if such a thing were possible."
Rafe turned about. "I had not assumed that you were expressing the desire; I merely wished to know our birth order for my own satisfaction."
There was a sardonic gleam in his half brother's eyes, and the fact that Rafe himself habitually greeted lame answers with the same look of disbelief was cold comfort. "My Christian name is Rafe," he said abruptly. "I dislike being addressed as Your Grace." And then, as if the two facts followed each other naturally, "I had a brother named Peter, but he died some years ago."
"I was under the impression that your given name was Raphael," the man said. He had seated himself while Rafe had his back turned, and he sat easily, with no sign of discomfort. As if they were equals, and as if he introduced himself to a brother or two every day.
"It is," Rafe said. "And your name?"
"We are tarred with the same brush," Mr. Spenser said rather obscurely.
Rafe found himself blinking like the village idiot. "What?"
"Gabriel."
"Raphael and Gabriel," Rafe said. "Bloody hell. I had no idea."
Suddenly the rather serious set of his brother's face shifted to a grin. "The discovery that you are named for an archangel drove you to curses?"
It was in his smile that Rafe found the difference between his brother's face and his own. For Gabriel
Spenser's grin had a charming seriousness to it that had never been part of Rafe's personality.
"What could our father have been thinking?" Rafe demanded. And then he caught, lightning quick, the shift in his brother's eyes that showed he knew perfectly well what the old duke had been thinking. "Next thing you'll be telling me that Holbrook dandled you on his knee," Rafe said resignedly.
"Only until age eight or so," Mr. Spenser said, adding with a touch of something like prudence, "Your Grace."
"Bloody hell," Rafe repeated. "And don't call me Your Grace. I've never taken to the title." There was a moment, and then: "My brother and I saw my—our— father on a biannual basis, just enough so that the duke could inform himself on how rapidly we were approaching the age of majority. We never appeared to be getting old fast enough."
He hated sympathy. Except from Peter, and it was an odd realization to find that he didn't mind seeing it in this new brother's eyes either.
"Would it be all right if I call you Gabriel?" Rafe asked, sipping his whiskey.
"Gabe."
"How many of there are you?" he asked, suddenly realizing that the countryside might well be littered with his kin. "Have I a sister?"
"Unfortunately, all the archangels were male."
"There are always the apocryphal gospels."
"I'm the only child of my mother. And the apocryphal gospels are unreliable. Your father would never have countenanced naming one of his children Uriel, although the name appears in the Book of Enoch."
"He's your father as well," Rafe observed. And: "You seem remarkably well informed about biblical matters."
"I'm a scholar," Gabe said with a faint smile. "Of biblical history, particularly the Old Testament."
Rafe's head was spinning. He had just discovered that he himself was named after an archangel and now it seemed that his brother was a scholar. A biblical scholar? For all Gabe looked like Beelzebub himself. "Damn me pink," he said. "Father didn't send you into that field because he named you with such ambition, did he?"
"The same nomenclature didn't turn you into a priest. No. Your father did pay for me to go to Cambridge, however. I am still there, at Emmanuel College."
"Is it bloody difficult to pass those exams?" Rafe said with ready sympathy. He'd been to Oxford himself, and although he found it easy enough, everyone knew that Cambridge was full of brilliant men who prided themselves on actually teaching something to their students.
"In fact, I did manage to pass the exams," his brother said gravely. "I am a professor of divinity."
Rafe blinked at him. Gabriel's hair was standing up at the back of his head, precisely as Rafe's was no doubt doing. "At Oxford, there are only twenty-four professors in the whole university."
"I suppose I haven't had the intrusions of rank and birth to hamper me," his brother said thoughtfully. "I can see that this house, for example, would be a terrible distraction."
Distraction? The seat of the Holbrooks since the 1300s… a distraction? But there was something Rafe had to ask. "Did my father have other children that you know about?" His lips felt stiff, even forming that question aloud. He was never fond of his father; indeed, he had hardly known the man. But he had thought him honorable if distant, interested in his reputation, if not his sons.
Gabe looked at him levelly, from under those black eyebrows that mimicked his own. "Your father and my mother were quite devoted to each other."
Rafe sat down, unable to imagine his father devoted to anyone.
"I do not think," Gabe added, "that you need worry about covetous siblings leaping from the woodwork."
"Ah," Rafe said. "Of course…" But he couldn't think what to say next. Only a fool would describe his mother as devoted to his father; they rarely saw each other. If one of his parents was in town, one was sure to find the other in the country.
A moment of silence fell between them. We're as alike as two peas in a pod, Rafe thought. Gabe had his large body, albeit with no softness in the waist. That was his unruly brown hair, and those were his large feet. The curve of his lip, the cleft in his chin, the square jaw were all familiar. Even the way Gabe was tapping his middle finger against the arm of his chair, which was precisely the kind of fidget that Rafe found himself doing when he had an unpleasant subject to broach.
"I expect this sounds preposterous," Gabe said. "But my mother, in particular, was quite sorry to hear of your brother's death. She thought him a delightful man, and very like his father."
Rafe stared. "She knew Peter?"
"Yes. I met him as well. When your father's will was proved, there was a bequest for my mother and myself."
"But I was there when the will was read!" Rafe felt as if he were riding a nag, trying to catch a group on thoroughbreds. "I would surely have noticed when that bequest was mentioned."
Gabe shrugged. "A silent clause, as I understand it. One has to guess that they are quite common. I expect the solicitor informed your brother in private."
"He was your brother as well," Rafe corrected. "And so Peter sought you out." Of course Peter would have done that. He would have wanted to make sure that their father's mistress was well taken care of. His—no, their— elder brother had been the consummate gentleman.
"His Grace took tea with my mother. She quite enjoyed his company."
Rafe put his drink to the side. "Why did you wait so long to tell me of your existence? Peter died four years ago."
Instead of answering, Gabe looked at him quizzically. "You are quite different from your brother."